


But the walls are giving way

by FanchonMoreau



Category: Mozart in the Jungle (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-18
Updated: 2016-12-18
Packaged: 2018-09-09 11:02:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8888380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FanchonMoreau/pseuds/FanchonMoreau
Summary: "It's time for the downbeat, Maestro. Are you ready?" When Gloria calls upon Rodrigo to do his part to end the strike, Rodrigo does the only thing he can do. He runs away. Post Season Two.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LucyAshton](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LucyAshton/gifts).



> Hello Yuletide friend! I hope you enjoy.
> 
> A few notes:
> 
> 1\. There will be a playlist at the end, but I'd suggest having Mahler's song ['Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen'](https://youtu.be/Md-JfajEtzM) and The Composer's (Komponist's) aria ['Sein wir wieder gut'](https://youtu.be/l_xRW4FQGQM) from Strauss's opera 'Ariadne auf Naxos' in your ear while reading. You also might want to check out the [translation to 'Ich bin der Welt'](http://www.lieder.net/lieder/get_text.html?TextId=14001) and [the synopsis of 'Ariadne auf Naxos.'](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariadne_auf_Naxos#Synopsis)
> 
> 2\. Conceived before s3 aired so significantly AU at this point. Although Rodrigo does meet an opera singer... 
> 
> 3\. Vladimir Jurowski is a real conductor, and I did not intend him any harm with this piece! Also no harm intended to Gustav Mahler or Richard Strauss. 
> 
> 4\. I own 0 Bon Jovi lyrics. 
> 
> So without further ado...

_I am hitting my head against the walls, but the walls are giving way. --Gustav Mahler_

 

Rodrigo lasts less than three weeks in the picket line.

It’s thrilling, in the beginning. He conducts the first chair strings in an impromptu and unpolished rendition of Dvorak’s String Quartet #12, _America_ , to a delighted group of onlookers. Cynthia tasks him with cuing the chants and making sure they’re clear and audible, and he takes his new assignment very seriously. Every morning at 10am, he leads the picketers in vocal warm ups.

But then the musicians start to disappear. They fill their rosters with lessons and take temporary gigs across the country. The union can keep them afloat financially for now, but that money will run out. And no one knows how long the strike will last.

“You don’t have to feel obligated to stay with us,” Cynthia tells him.

“But you’re my _orchestra_ ,” Rodrigo insists.

She smiles. “We’re big kids. We can take care of ourselves. Take a gig somewhere else if you need to. Trust me, we’ve got this.”

He does trust her, and he trusts his orchestra. And he’s not stupid enough to miss the implication that perhaps he’s not wanted here, at this particular moment.

He rides the subway back to the place he’s subletting in Washington Heights. The bay window in his living room overlooks three bodegas and a diner, and the music, god the _music_ , the Spanish hip hop blasts from car speakers at all hours. His Dominican neighbors, upon realizing who he was, brought him a full _tres leches_ cake from the local bakery and played him Juan Luis Guerra on vinyl. They kept him dancing well into the night.

Leaving Gloria’s townhouse was the best thing he ever did. Even if he didn’t _quite_ say goodbye. He left a note. A polite note. A nice note, all things considered.

He sighs, opens his laptop. There are messages from Michel that tonight he will ignore. ITunes shuffles to a recording of Sibelius 3, but even the bombast of that can’t compete with the music and the yelling coming from one of the bodegas outside.

Rodrigo keeps the Sibelius on, though. For contrast.

He wants to conduct this. His hearing has cleared, and he feels wide awake, more so than he was all day, and he lifts his hands and--

And--

Where even _is_ Montana? And why _Montana_ , specifically? If you are going on a romantic sex vacation, could you really not come up with somewhere better than Montana? What’s even there? Grass? Cows?

Rodrigo curls one hand tight into a fist. Then the other. He paces. The Sibelius swells and someone cranks up the volume on the car speakers in the street.

She’s not the only one who can leave. He can go across the country too, or to Europe, or wherever he wants.

No orchestra to conduct here, anyway.

Vlad Jurowski had posted something on Facebook the other day, a clip of Radio Kamer Filharmonie rehearsing Mahler. Mahler, Mahler, there is _always_ emotional clarity to be found in Mahler. They perform at the Concertgebouw this weekend. He texts Michel and asks him to book a flight to Amsterdam.

He should get ready for sleep. He doesn’t. He collapses on his bed and lets the music overwhelm him.

* * *

He’s packing when the phone rings. He picks it up without looking at the caller ID.

“Finally!” Gloria shouts, and then she laughs. “He answers his phone!”

“No, no, no, no, no, I am not… I am not talking to you!” he shouts back, and then he throws the nearest item of clothing into his bag. Dirty underwear. That’ll do. “You do not lock out the orchestra and then just… call me like… it’s fine! No, Gloria! The orchestra isn’t playing and it’s not fine!”

“Oh get off your high horse, Rodrigo. You lived in my house until, what, three weeks ago,” she says, deadpan. “Before you snuck out.”

“I did not sneak out, I left a note.”

“Yes, yes, the note. _Gloria. Moving out. Best, Rodrigo.”_  She laughs again, but there’s a dark glimmer to it. Cellos, the low whisper of a double bass, he thinks. “You couldn’t say that to my face?”

“Hey, _hey_! I thought that very good of me! Because you… you… ” He kicks his duffel bag across the floor. It’s not as cathartic as he had hoped. He takes a big breath through his nose, just like in his vocal warm ups, and blows it all out in a rush. All right, all right. Calmer.

“I just don’t understand, Gloria,” he says. “You love this orchestra. How could you do this to them?”

He does not expect the torrent of anger that follows.

“What did you just say to me? How could _I_ do this to them?” she yells. Strings are gone. It’s all brass now. “So I get absolutely no credit for _saving_ this orchestra from the tyrannical rule of Biben? You should be _thanking me_ for making sure you have a job once this whole shitstorm blows over!”

“Oh, so you think this about me, eh?” he spits. He’s shaking; he doesn’t know when that started. He starts taking giant strides across his bedroom. “That orchestra could go on without me, we both know that. And Biben, Biben, who the fuck cares about Biben? Biben is… is… a speck of dust. A fly. Smaller than that. A piece of waste that was shit from a fly. You think Edward Biben can stop this orchestra? You don’t think this orchestra is bigger than him, bigger than me, bigger than you? You don’t that this orchestra, and the music that it plays, and the people that love it, can survive this? Can survive anything?”

A beat. Another. An intake of breath. “You don’t get this. You don’t understand how anything works at all.” Gloria speaks with a quiet intensity. It’s not an instrument he’s heard before. “You don’t value the work I do, or that any of us do, to keep this giant machine running. To make sure it doesn’t all come to a grinding halt. Because it can, and it _will_ , Rodrigo. And I called you because I had _hoped,_ foolish of me, I now realize, that you could help me bring the orchestra back to the negotiating table. But not if you insist on being such a _child_ about it.”

This isn’t the Gloria he thought he knew. He sits down on his bed. “You don’t have… any faith in this orchestra?’ he asks, helpless, confused. “At all?”

“Oh, fuck you, Rodrigo,” she says, and hangs up.

He stares at his phone. Well, fuck her too, then. He’ll go to Amsterdam and he’ll free himself from all of this…. this _fucking red tape._

He needs music, something that isn’t classical. Something he would never and could never conduct.

Rodrigo scrolls through his music until he reaches Bon Jovi’s _Livin’ on a Prayer_.

He turns the volume up and waits. The verse, the chorus, over and over until... the key change. There’s nothing in his repertoire quite like that key change.

_You live for the fight when that’s all that you’ve got!_

He puts the song on repeat.

* * *

Rodrigo sleeps through his flight to Amsterdam. Once they touch down, he only has an hour to drop his things at his hotel, shower, change, and then get to the Concertgebouw. He only just makes it.

There is nothing remarkable about the evening’s program: early Webern, Mahler’s Ruckert Lieder, Schubert’s Eighth "Unfinished" Symphony. Truth be told, Rodrigo is more keen on the performance of Mahler 4 in a few days’ time. But he has nothing better to do on his first night in Amsterdam, and it will be nice to see Vlad again.

He’s heard the name of the mezzo soloist before, but he’s not sure from where. Anna Nichols. She might have been at the Met maybe a year ago? Two? Or maybe Cynthia’s worked with her, he swears he first heard the name from Cynthia.

“Not well established but on the rise,” he overhears someone say outside the restrooms. “One of the critics in the Guardian compared her to Kathleen Ferrier.”

“Every British mezzo is compared to Kathleen Ferrier at one point or another,” comes the reply. “Either her or Janet Baker.”

A few people recognize him. He can tell by the whispering that seems to follow him around. But no one approaches him, and Rodrigo can’t tell if it’s because of courtesy or pity.

He sits on his hands until the performance starts.

The Webern Passacaglia is solid, although it’s far from Rodrigo’s favorite piece. Vlad does quite well with it though. But it’s the Mahler, he thinks, that Vlad will excel in above all.

The mezzo, Anna, walks on stage to somewhat tepid smattering of applause. Rodrigo claps as loud as he can without calling attention to himself. She’s a vision in a shimmery dress that’s cut like a toga, and there’s something about the way she carries herself that just lets her float to her place next to the conductor.

She looks out into the audience. Her features are soft but her eyes are sharp, blue, intensely focused. She looks like an angel, but one that you wouldn’t want to cross.

Her voice is _unreal_.

It’s large, and dark in color but dark in another way, too: it carries sadness. It can float with grace and precision when it needs to, but at its best moments it opens up and brings forth a power that Rodrigo can barely fathom, let alone try to quantify or explain. At the end of _Um Mitternacht_ , he feels winded. Like she’s crushed him.

 _Ich Bin der Welt_ is last. Rodrigo closes his eyes during the cor anglais solo at the beginning; he knows that some oboists happily double on cor anglais, but no, he will not think about that now. He opens his eyes as soon as Anna starts singing, and she looks straight at him.

Her _Ich Bin der Welt_ is weary and lonely. He is used to finding peace in this song: _I rest in a quiet realm, I live alone in my heaven, in my love and in my song,_ that’s the translation. But Anna’s heaven doesn’t seem like a nice place at all. Her whole voice empties out during those final lines. It’s stunning, and it is so, so sad.

Rodrigo can’t stop thinking about it, even during the Schubert. Vlad conducts with subtlety and insight, but he’s hardly listening. The Mahler is still echoing in his head.

_In my love and in my song._

He finds Vlad backstage after the concert. “Maestro Jurowski!”

“Maestro de Souza!”

They hug. Rodrigo remembers spending hours in a London bar with him sometime during BBC Proms. It was maybe five, six years ago. Rodrigo was shitting his pants about making his Proms debut and Vlad was there to encourage him and, as well as, as they say in England, take the piss.

“A nice surprise,” Vlad says.

Rodrigo shrugs. “Well, what else am I going to do, I don’t have an orchestra!” He laughs, trying to make a joke of it.

Vlad doesn’t seemconvinced. “That’s rough,” he says. “Listen we’ll talk to the director and get you a guest contract. You come here and do Mahler 2. Or 4. Or 8. Any Mahler you like. We get government funding so no money problems, eh?”

“That’s, that’s very kind of you. But I can’t… I won’t…”

"It’s just a guest contract,” Vlad cuts in. “Not a marriage, Rodrigo.”

Rodrigo snorts and shakes his head. “Right, right, yeah, of course. And I have to say you and the orchestra-- enchanting, divine, the Schubert was just… well, I have no words for what it was! And the Mahler! I don’t suppose the lady is still here?”

Vlad chuckles. “She might be. She went to a practice room during the Schubert. Said she needed to rehearse for her next job.” He shoves his hands into his trouser pockets. “She is _dedicated_. Always working. Always trying to be better.”

“But it pays off, no?” Rodrigo asks. He replays her effortless pianissimos in his mind. It takes a lot of work to make it sound that easy.

“Yes, it does,” Vlad mutters, and then he reaches out to shake Rodrigo’s hand. “Good seeing you, Maestro. I’ll text you the address of the party.”

“Great, wonderful,” Rodrigo says. “I’ll call you, eh?”

As Vlad leaves, Rodrigo grabs one of the stage hands and has her to take him to the practice rooms. It’s quiet at first, and then, suddenly, her voice.

He knocks on the door where it’s coming from. “Anna?” he calls. He knocks louder. “Anna! It’s Maestro Rodrigo de Souza.”

There’s a loud, exasperated sigh on the other side of the door. And then the _thump_ of a piano bench falling over, a soft curse, and then a louder and much more colorful curse. 

Anna finally gets the door open. “I was hoping I had hallucinated you,” she says.

Now that she’s no longer on stage, she’s much smaller. Rodrigo thinks she can’t be much taller than five feet. Her blond hair has tumbled out of her tight bun, and the gown is gone, replaced with a National Opera Studio jumper and pair of washed out jeans.

She looks exhausted.

“No, it’s really me,” he says, and smiles. He sticks out his hand. “I’m Rodrigo.”

She doesn’t take his hand. “Yes, I know who you are. Listen, I don’t want to be rude but I’m working on something and I’d rather not break my momentum so if you…”

“No problem, no problem.” He puts his hands up and backs away from the doorway. “I just wanted to say that your voice is… is… I mean just… astonishing, beyond astonishing, like wow, you know?”

She frowns. “It’s wow?”

Her speaking voice is what other Brits might call a cut-glass London accent. Rodrigo thinks he understands why. “I’m sorry,” he says “I just wanted you to know I haven’t heard a Ruckert lieder like that before, and I found it very moving and hey, I think I saw at least two old ladies crying behind me, so. Well done.”

She nods a few times, and then offers him the tiniest wisp of a smile. “Thanks,” she says. “Thanks. But I’m debuting a role next month so I need to…" 

“Oh, which role?”

She crosses her arms and leans back against the doorframe. Rodrigo wonders if she sings Carmen. “Komponist,” she says. “ _Ariadne auf Naxos_." 

“Ah, Strauss! The Composer!” Rodrigo exclaims. “There's that one aria you sing... _Sein wir wieder gut_ , right? _Musik ist eine helige kunst_ …” he starts to sing, very far away from the intended pitch. He can see Anna wince in discomfort.

“That would be the one,” she says brusquely. “Now if you’ll excuse me…”

“Of course,” he says, but as Anna starts to close the door he finds that he can’t let her go just yet. “No, no, no, no, sorry, I have a question, before you go. About the Mahler.”

Anna looks down and rubs at her forehead. Rodrigo can see that her makeup is starting to dry and flake. She hasn’t removed it yet. After the performance, she went straight to the practice room. “Go on then,” she sighs. 

“The last song, _Ich bin der Welt,_ ” he starts. “In every performance I have heard there is… how do you say… transcendence. No, that’s not right, maybe… resolution? An arrival at peace. Either it’s where you start or it’s where you end up, you rise to it or ground yourself in it or… I am not explaining well, but you know what I am talking about, eh? But you didn’t reach it. You were just alone. And sad. I can’t stop thinking about your sadness. It challenged what I thought I knew about the song. But I want to know why? Why did you do this?”

Anna’s eyes are glassy, but they haven’t lost that sharp glint. She is trying so hard not to cry. “You come down here,” she says shakily, “to question my artistic choices?”

“No, Anna, that is not what I am doing…”

“My choices are my choices and you have no business asking me to account for them now.” She’s bright red and one of the tears that was standing in her eyes has rolled down her cheek. “Now, for the last time, Maestro, good night.”

She slams the door behind her. And Rodrigo can’t walk away, not yet, because he still can’t stop thinking about her performance. The plaintive cor anglais solo, right at the beginning, and then Anna’s voice--soft, dark, and spinning endlessly into the hall in front of her.

He imagines, for a moment, that it’s his hall, and his orchestra. Hailey would try the cor anglais solo, or do the oboe solo a few pages in. Hailey’s energy and blood with Anna’s subtlety and deep melancholy: it would be a perfect match. A revelation, even. An _Ich bin der Welt_ that could reinvent the song.

Rodrigo walks out of the Concertgebouw and into the unfamiliar city. And as he turns onto the main thoroughfare, he wonders… _why is she so sad?_

* * *

“The thing with singers is,” Mahler says, “is that unless you are their teacher or their maestro, you can’t talk to them after a performance.”

“Except to tell them how great they are,” Strauss adds.

Mahler nods. “Except to tell them how great they are. Or to make love to them!”

Both men laugh.

Rodrigo blinks, surveys his surroundings. He’s in a coffeeshop, not an American one, definitely a Dutch one. He doesn’t quite remember how he got here. He tried to call Vlad but then realized that he had not authorized his phone to work in Europe. So he is not at the orchestra’s afterparty.

But he is splitting a bong with the giants of the late Romantic period, so who’s won really?

(Rodrigo is not sure he’s won at all).

“I didn’t want to make love to her,” Rodrigo protests meekly. “And she was right, it wasn’t necessary of me to ask. Not as an audience member.”

“No, but as her _conductor,”_ Mahler says. “You’d want to know why she was singing it that way.”

“You’d be making those choices together,” Strauss adds. “Couldn’t make it that despondent if you took it faster.”

Mahler guffaws. “It’s a contemplative piece! It’s not meant to be a horse race.”

“Oh, you should spend some time in this era,” Strauss says with a chuckle. He takes a hit of the bong. “I wouldn’t be surprised if someone’s made an electropop remix. But back to the point. Which was…”

“Sadness,” Mahler supplies.

“Sadness,” Strauss says. “How we communicate our sadness in music. Now, Maestro, you’ve had your heart broken…”

 Rodrigo coughs up smoke. “Whoa, whoa, whoa, hey, listen,” Rodrigo chokes out. “I have not--”

“And it affects your music-making,” Strauss goes on, as if he hasn’t heard Rodrigo at all. “If your first violin had a terrible day, that affects the music-making. Music’s a living creature, one that stays at your side and bends to your emotions. And thank god for that, no?”

Rodrigo’s not sure he completely follows. “Sometimes shitty days lead to shitty playing,” he points out.

“Of course,” Mahler says. “But that’s not the point Richard’s making. It’s that even though music feels larger than life…”

“Especially since some of us insist on using giant hammers…” Strauss teases.

“... it always comes directly from us,” Mahler says, slamming his hand down on the table to  punctuate his point. “ _We_ have made it. The instruments, the hall, the scores, even the technology that everyone here uses, nothing about music is beyond human invention. It is ours. It was never bigger than us.”

Mahler nods, pleased with himself. He takes a long hit of the bong.

“Oh, well done Gustav!” Strauss claps Mahler on the back. “Perfectly put. Now, gentlemen, I believe there is a drink with Herr Mozart that has my name on it. But it was a pleasure, truly.”

He get up from his seat and makes it halfway to the door. He turns around. “It's hard for singers, these days,” he muses. “All the, travel, the isolation. They’re not lucky like you, Maestro. They don't have an orchestra. Do remember to be kind to them.”

Strauss leaves, and both Rodrigo and Mahler sigh heavily.

“I don’t have an orchestra either,” Rodrigo groans. He lowers his head to the counter. The wooden surface is sticky. It feels like the only thing holding him down. “I am a maestro without an orchestra!”

“Oh, I wouldn’t give up yet,” says Mahler, from somewhere far away.  “I think, if you look closely enough, you’ll find that everything is precisely where is needs to be.”

Rodrigo grunts. He can’t lift his head.

“It’s time for the downbeat, Maestro. Are you ready?”

* * *

Rodrigo wakes up in his clothes. 

He can’t remember exactly what happened the night before. Well, he went to the Concertgebouw, he spoke to Vlad and Anna Nichols, and then… he went out? He smoked weed? 

He smells his shirt. Yes, definitely weed. He scrunches his nose up. He feels strange--not high, but fuzzy and wired. For reasons he can’t understand, excerpts from Strauss’s _Ariadne auf Naxos_ are crowding his mind. He’s not going back to sleep.

He takes a shower, throws on clean clothes, and then goes out to one of the mobile phone shops nearby. He buys a pay-as-you-go phone and loads it up with far more credit than he needs for a brief stay in Amsterdam. 

The number he’s thinking of dialing, he has it memorized. 

Before he can think about it, he’s tapping the phone in the palm of his palm. 1-2-3, 1-2-3, a nervous waltz time that rushes.

Rodrigo stops. Breathes. Dials her number.

“Hello?”

It’s so good to hear her voice.

“Hai Lai!”

“ _Maestro?_ ” she asks, stunned. “Really?”

“I know, Hai Lai!” He can’t contain his excitement. He starts walking down the street, picking up speed with each step. “It’s really me, and it’s you!”

She scoffs. “Yeah, that’s what happens when you call my number. Where are you? What are you doing? I heard you fell off the grid.” 

“I am not off the grid!” He stops walking. He’s standing on a bridge. He hasn’t been paying any attention to where he’s been going. “I’m in Amsterdam,” he says.

“Sounds pretty far off the grid to me,” she retorts. “What time is it there?”

“What time is it here? What do you mean what time is it here, what time is it there?” he asks airily.

He swears he can hear her roll her eyes. “It’s one in the morning. So whatever you have, it better be good.” 

“Have you heard of the opera _Ariadne auf Naxos_ by Richard Strauss?”

“I…” she starts, and then she makes a soft, befuddled noise that no instrument could even try to mimic. “You called me from Amsterdam at one in the morning to ask me about a Strauss opera?”

“Yes,” he says, as if that was exactly the reason he first picked up the phone. “No. Yes. Just answer the question, Hai Lai!”

“I’ve heard some of the music,” she says with some trepidation. “Like, maybe one of the arias?”

“All right, all right, I can work with that.” Rodrigo sits down on a bench next to the river. He takes a quick look at the city around him. Early on a Sunday morning, it is quiet, with only the bakeries and the tourist shops open for customers. Amsterdam is lovely like this.

He misses New York.

“Okay, so _Ariadne auf Naxos_ ,” Rodrigo begins. “An Austrian rich guy is hosting a dinner party, and he’s scheduled entertainers just before he’s set to have this big fireworks show. He’s got a young composer, Der Komponist…”

“Oh yeah,” Hailey interrupts. “He’s sung by a mezzo.”

“Yes he is,” Rodrigo says. He thinks of Anna briefly, wonders how she’ll get along with the role. “Anyway, the rich guy has hired Der Komponist to write him an opera and he’s also hired a commedia dell’arte troupe, led by the gorgeous Zerbinetta. Except he’s double booked them, and there’s no time for both of them to perform because the fireworks, Hai Lai, they need to go off _exactly_ on time. So he says that the composer’s opera and the commedia troupe will just have to go on simultaneously. And obviously this is unacceptable to the young composer, who has worked so long and hard on his masterpiece, until of course the beautiful Zerbinetta comes in and flutters her eyelashes at him and poof! He changes his mind. But right before he realizes that he’s given up his opera to this commedia troupe, he sings this gorgeous aria to music called _Sein wir wieder gut._ He sings:  _Musik ist eine heilige kunst._ Music is the holiest art!”

He pauses. “You still there? Hai Lai?” 

She hums into the phone. “Yeah, I’m still here. Holiest art?”

“Good,” he says, relieved. “Good. And the second act is just exactly what happens when a serious opera goes on at the same time as a commedia troupe. And I’ve always... hated that second act, you know? The music is gorgeous but there’s no _joy_ in watching a commedia troupe ridicule the poor composer’s work. It’s just... _sad_. But, you know, I keep thinking about it. With everything that’s happened with the orchestra and the lockout. I keep thinking about it and I think I’m onto something. I’m hitting the walls with my head, Hai Lai, and the walls are finally giving way.”

“That’s Mahler,” Hailey corrects, a slight tease in her voice. “You’re talking Strauss.”

“Yes, yes, Strauss,”  He thinks he hears her moving, either that or he’s losing the connection. “Anyway, the second act. I’ve realized it’s not sad, it’s _genius_. Here we are, all wanting to express ourselves and make art, but working within these… these _maddening_ limitations. Travel, money, paperwork, timing, limitations in our bodies, limitations in our instruments. But that’s what we do, it’s what we have to do, because music’s _not_ handed to us by some higher power. We have to patch it together ourselves! Which is _exactly_ what I am going to tell Cynthia and Gloria when I get back to New York!”

Hailey takes a moment to process what he says. He listens closely to her silence and waits for a sound, any sound, that might betray what she’s thinking.

“You’re coming back to New York?” she asks, finally. 

“Oh yeah,” he answers. “As soon as I can. And what about you? Are you still in Montana?” 

“Yeah, I’m, um, here for another week.” There’s shuffling on the other line, a creak that could be a door opening. Or long, high note from a violin. “Then two seconds in New York before I meet the Andrew Walsh Ensemble in Paris.”

“Hmm,” Rodrigo says. People are just starting the roam the streets where he is. It’s just past nine in the morning, but he has energy, suddenly. He’s bold. He gets up from the bench and breaks out into a brisk walk, which quickly turns into a jog.

“You should come to New York now,” he says, hushed with exertion. He remembers his vocal exercises and breathes in through his nose. Holds it. Lets it all go. “And if we work things out, then you can stay.”

“You think you can solve a labor dispute in a week?" 

“I don’t know, Hai Lai,” he says as his running comes to a stop. “But you know, _Ariadne auf Naxos_ has a happy ending. At least now, I think it does.”

She chuckles. “Does it?”

“Look it up, on the… eh… on the Wikipedia. On YouTube. There are entire operas on YouTube now, did you know that Hai Lai? Look for like, the Bayerische Staatsoper from Munich, they do a good job. It’s not even three hours long. For me, Hai Lai.”

“All right, Maestro,” she says, her voice lifting as she begins to laugh. “For you.” Then she hangs up.

He grips his phone is his hand and then starts tapping it against his chin. His hotel, he needs to find his way back to it. But which road did he come from? 

A church bell rings from somewhere not far away. It must be marking nine o’clock, but it’s almost five minutes late. Somewhere in the city a monk overslept. It fills him, unexpectedly, with joy.

He dials Michel and asks him to book the next flight to New York City.

* * *

His first stop after he lands at JFK is Gloria’s townhouse.

Her dress is rumpled, she looks tired. She looks ready to close the door right in his face, but he takes out his phone and starts playing the music at just the right moment.

Bon Jovi’s music pours into Gloria’s living room. 

“Livin’ on a prayer?” she asks. “ _Really_?”

Rodrigo tries to turn the music up before realizing he’s got it as loud as it goes. “Come on, I know you love it. And there’s a key change near the end that’s just really satisfying, you know? Hey, here comes the chorus, you going to sing with me or what? _Ohhhhhh, we’re halfway there! Ohhhh ohhhhh, livin’ on a prayer.”_

“I thought you left the country,” she says, incredulously, as she opens the door to let him in.

He moves deeper into the house so the music reaches more places. If he remembers correctly, the acoustic in Gloria’s kitchen is particularly good.  “I’m very much in the country now,” he yells over Jon Bon Jovi. “And I am ready, Gloria! I have never been more ready in my life!”

She snorts. “Ready for what, exactly?”

“The negotiations!” He shuffles past Gloria’s grand piano and almost reaches the kitchen, but Gloria runs to the the kitchen entrance. She throws her arms out so she's completely blocking the door. 

He turns off the music. “I really am ready. Call Cynthia, call Union Bob, call Betty Cragdale. Let’s do this right now. We need to all talk it out together, and I will say whatever it is you need me to say to make that happen.”

Gloria stares at him for a long while, four measures of rests, at least. Then she steps back and crosses her arms, as if challenging him to barrel past her. He doesn't. 

“What changed your mind?” she finally asks.

He looks at the floor. He imagines himself as a soloist, a nervous one, waiting for the conductor's cue to start playing. _Are you ready?_ Mahler chides. Rodrigo doesn't know that he is. But sometimes it is okay to bring fear out in front of the orchestra. See what they do with it. 

“At the end of the day,” he says softly, “the orchestra is nothing more than the sum of its parts. So it’s time to put the parts back together, no?”

Gloria’s mouth drops open. She gawps at him for a few beats before she finds her voice. “Well, well, look who’s grown up” she says, and then her face breaks into a giant smile. “I’ll get some white wine from the fridge. You can use the phone in my office upstairs.”

“Can I turn the music back on?” he calls to her as he’s bounding up the stairs.

“Go crazy!”

He hits the play button on his phone and Bon Jovi starts up again. “And then once we’ve got a deal,” he yells, “how do you feel about renting a loft in Brooklyn and hosting a Shostakovich mosh pit?”

“Shut up and get on the phone, Rodrigo!”

He laughs. _Take my hand, we’ll make it I swear,_ Jon Bon Jovi sings.

* * *

Two nights later, he’s napping on Gloria’s living room couch. Several members of management have been in and out of the townhouse over the past few days, and Cynthia and Betty Cragdale are just short of living here. Rodrigo’s gotten everyone back at the table, and he sticks around to smooth over rough edges and explain, as best he can, the actual labor that goes into a rehearsal. The long hours. The demand on the musicians’ bodies. The monetary and personal expense of doing this job well.

He’s napping on Gloria’s couch, and the sound of heels on the wood floor wakes him up. “Hey,” Cynthia says. Rodrigo just barely blinks his eyes open.

“Anything yet?” he rasps.

Cynthia shakes her head. “We’re fighting dirty for better health insurance.”

“As you should,” he says, and yawns. “And as you will, tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow,” she echoes, and sighs. “Night, Rodrigo.”

Once she’s gone, Rodrigo reaches out to the coffee table and grabs his phone. Five messages. Michel, Michel, Gloria (from across the house, it seems), Thomas.

Hailey.

His thumb hovers over the play button on his phone. He closes his eyes, and then presses play.

“Hey Maestro, it’s me,” she says. “I watched your opera. I don’t really consider myself an opera person, but I found it like, I don’t know, I was kind of enraptured by it? I didn’t think opera could parody itself or be self aware? And still be so beautiful. I get why you identify with the idealistic composer. I identify with him, too. He does get a show in the end, even if it's not exactly the show he imagined. I mean...that's how it is, I guess. We don’t get to experience things just as we want them to be. And if we did, would we be moved to make music at all?”

She stops, swallows. Composes herself.

“God, I’m…  I'm tying myself in knots here. But anyway, if you think you can patch this together… I’m flying to New York tomorrow morning. I leave for Paris on Sunday night. If you reach a deal before then, and I have my job back, I’ll tell Andrew Walsh to fuck off. I’m routing for you, Maestro. And I’m thinking of you. Bye.”

He plays it again immediately, and then a third time, a fourth, _da capo al fine_ , repeating from the beginning over and over again.

“You were right,” Mahler says from the bench at Gloria’s grand piano. “He’s had his heart broken.”

Strauss chuckles. “Oh, I don’t know.” He’s sitting in Gloria’s giant armchair. “Seems like there’s hope yet.”

Mahler pulls a pipe out of nowhere and lights it. “I should warn you, though, Maestro. You’ll spend years trying to find music that makes you feel precisely like listening to her voice does.”

Strauss hums in agreement. “And you’ll never find it.”

Rodrigo considers them both, and then blows a long raspberry. “Fuck you, and you! Just.... just... leave me alone, all right?”

They laugh at him, and eventually, they disappear.

But the masters are right. He wakes up the next morning with her voice stuck in his ear: _I'm thinking of you._ And there's no music quite like it. 

 _Well_ , Rodrigo thinks, as he reaches for a baton that is not there, _not yet._

**Author's Note:**

> Works mentioned: 
> 
> 1\. [Dvorak, String Quartet #12, America](https://youtu.be/DxtAHpYIXdU)  
> 2\. [Juan Luis Guerra - Ojala que llueva café](https://youtu.be/XZOLOggfWp0)  
> 3\. [Sibelius, Symphony no 3 in C Major (I love how much this show loves Sibelius?)](https://youtu.be/4kNtcbu6Veo)  
> 4\. [Livin' on a Prayer, Bon Jovi](https://youtu.be/lDK9QqIzhwk)  
> 5\. [Webern, Passacaglia Op. 1](https://youtu.be/9VMIhkU_XpQ)  
> 6\. [ Mahler, 'Um Mitternacht' from Ruckert Lieder.](https://youtu.be/0_keW0yTBkY) Singer here is Kathleen Ferrier, who an audience member compares to Anna Nichols.  
> 7\. [Mahler, 'Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen' from Ruckert Lieder](https://youtu.be/Md-JfajEtzM) Kathleen Ferrier singing again.  
> 8\. [Schubert, Symphony 8 "Unfinished"](https://youtu.be/uWnKMzAedK4)  
> 9\. [ Der Komponist's aria 'Sein wir wieder gut from Richard Strauss's 'Ariadne auf Naxos'](https://youtu.be/l_xRW4FQGQM), sung by Tatiana Troyanos
> 
> If you're wondering why Mahler and Strauss seem to know a lot about making love to singers, Mahler famously had an affair with soprano Johanna Richter, and Strauss was married to soprano Pauline de Ahna.


End file.
